Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Disney Day 3 - Animal Kingdom

Wednesday morning, we had an early reservation for Chef Mickey. Since buses only start running at a certain time, we weren't sure we could make it on time, so we called the night before and had a taxi pick us up. The kids were so excited to see Mickey! And this was our one and only matching shirt day. :) Ha!

I loved having the big breakfast buffets! Was probably my favorite part of eating there.

After breakfast, we walked around the Contemporary resort a little bit and found their gingerbread house.

Ben and I were amazed, but the kids didn't really understand what it was. After that, we took the monorail, a fairy across the water, and then a bus back to our hotel. Animal Kingdom didn't open until 9am, and Gammy was also sick. AND I had forgotten to fix Austin's hair, so we had to go back because it was driving me insane. (My friends like to remind me how ridiculous I am about this. :)) We knew we wouldn't spend a whole lot of time at AK, so we were looking forward to a lazy afternoon. We got there just in time to run to the Lion King Festival to use our FastPass. The show was wonderful!!! Ben is taking me to the big performance in February, and I am so excited! This was a fabulous show to be such small scale. Bennett loved it, but Austin got pretty restless and was begging to leave.

Next was the Safari. The wait was so short that we didn't even use our FastPass. It seems to be everyone's favorite thing at AK, but we didn't like it too much. It was mostly because a lady didn't wait her turn, and crammed herself AND her 3 kids onto our bench with our family of 4. Ben was SO mad. We were all squished up and miserable. As soon as we got off of that, we went to meet Pocahontas, which was Austin's highlight of AK. :) Y'all... she was insanely gorgeous.

We ate lunch at a BBQ place, which was SO good after having so much "fancy food." I had a pulled pork sandwich and some of the world's best orange lemonade. And it didn't hurt that I could get chocolate mousse with basically every meal.

We missed Gammy and Pepaw with us that day. They stayed in the room all morning. When we got back to the hotel, Ben took Austin swimming for a little bit, and we fed the kids dinner in the food court. We got them bathed and in the bed with Gammy and Pepaw, and then Ben and I escaped to Magic Kingdom!

When we got there, a parade was about to start and there was not a single spot for us to stand. Believe me, we walked everywhere to try to find one. So we decided to go eat at Casey's (which I was so excited about) and wait it out. After that, we saved a good spot on the curb in front of Starbucks, and waited for the next parade.

It was the Electrical Parade, and my favorite was Tink! We were also pretty excited about seeing Pete and the dragon, since that was a favorite of both of ours as a kid. :)

Ben says I kept him out way too late, but we both had a great time! :) We stayed for the fireworks after the parade, and in the middle of the program, a guy next to us proposed to his girlfriend! It was so fun! Everyone started clapping and screaming and she was showing us all her ring. :) That was a fun memory!